Sir - Commenting on the Irish findings in the Gallup International Millennium Survey, Padraig O'Morain says (Opinion, January 6th): "What struck me as remarkable is that only 27 per cent regard God as `very important'." I'm afraid this is a very simplistic reading of the survey. Respondents were asked to rate, on a scale of one to 10, the importance of God in their lives, with the lower and higher numbers representing degrees of lesser and greater importance respectively. Significantly, this was the only question in the survey in which respondents were asked to use a scale.
Obviously, the surveying company is very well aware that this specific issue, because of its subjectivity and complexity, is much more difficult to probe than, for example, the first question ("How often do you attend religious services these days?"), which is amenable to a simple answer.
On the scale of one to 10, 74 per cent of respondents were in the top half (6-10) in answer to the question "How important is God in your life?" The largest group (27 per cent) were at point 10.
This corresponds very closely to the findings in the MRBI survey of Irish Catholics for RTE's Prime Time in January 1998 , which found that for 82 per cent of respondents religion was "very important" or "fairly important" in their lives. - Yours, etc.,
Jim Cantwell, Director, Catholic Press and Information Office, Dublin.